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CAR T-cell Therapy

CAR T-cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that reprograms a patient’s own T cells to recognize and kill cancer cells. The role of T cells in the immune system is to seek and destroy abnormal cells. Cancer cells can evade detection in a number of ways, allowing cancer to grow and expand. To create CAR T cells, T cells are collected from the patient’s own blood. Scientists alter the T cells to add proteins called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) on the cell surface. The altered T cells are multiplied and infused back into the patient where the CARs allow T cells to fasten onto cancer cells and kill them.

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